Steam Community :: Zuccubus

0.0 hrs on record

Dawntrail is the most "mixed-bag" expansion since Stormblood, though it is definitely better than base Stormblood(excluding patches in fairness). The primary issue as is apparent almost immediately, is that the majority of it is built upon the shoulders of a single character(another similarity to Stormblood), Wuk Lamat. This in it of itself is flawed, because an individuals opinion of this one character will then affect how they experience the whole of the expansion. Personally, I came into Dawntrail a Wuk Lamat enjoyer, and was glad to go around Tuliyolal exploring it with her as a tour guide, and then help her with the succession competition, going everywhere with Wuk Lamat, and watching Wuk Lamat grow and experience a character arc. A character arc that mostly concludes at the halfway point, at this point I was *very* tired of watching Wuk do things. I understand it was meant to be a mentorship, and I did enjoy watching her grow. But she has twice as much dialogue as all of the Scions combined. This is too much. Krile is very important to this story, but is sidelined to let Wuk talk most of the time. Erenville is incredibly important to the second half of the story, but even his own mother ignores him in favor of Wuk . The second half of the story really gets the ball rolling however, ending strong, despite the continued feeling that every character is pointed at Wuk. As it does get to be more of a shared story. Overall I'd advise more pacing while playing through the story if you typically plow through like I do, it's not nearly as bad as people are saying, though again, it relies too heavily on Wuk Lamat. You can definitely have fun during the first half, and the second gets really good.
The dungeons are a fair bit harder than previously, but are ten times as fun. The mechanics in them have really started to get more experimental and active. The trials have seen less improvement, but that is more in part due to the fact that trial gameplay has always been better than dungeons, so less room to improve. Overall the instances are MUCH better than previously
We are seeing that the questing gameplay could use some work. It's less that it's gotten worse, and more so that it hasn't gotten better enough. It's time that the questing went past a few instances and walking around interacting with stuff. It'd be nice to see more minigames and stuff to spruce things up. There's an inspect mechanic in this, but it would be great to see some actual puzzle there, like connecting the pieces to the environment, or speculating what happened to cause the changes you're viewing. Could see some chocobo racing type mechanics for running away from stuff or something. Could do an ace attorney style press and present system for interrogation, overall things could really do with spice at this point.
The presentation and graphical updates are doing wonders, these are some of the best environments we've gotten in FFXIV history and the ambient music in these areas is phenomenal. The people who inhabit these lands are also diverse and interesting, though there's an odd lack of voice acting in comparison to previous expacs. Overall the presentation is generally amazing.
Overall Dawntrail is a step up in some regards, and a step down in others. It's not a tumble like some are saying, but it would be good to examine it's shortfalls (especially in regards to zooming out the story a it), and improve going into the patches.

Posted 4 July.

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